The blessings of a no show bus

A few minutes into the ride, the driver's phone rang and he started speaking in Arabic.

Friends with Words is a newsletter about language, culture, and identity, created by a Russian-born, Israel-based writer, linguist, and single mom.

It's for people who believe that curiosity can heal the world or, at least, make it a slightly less horrible place.

Last Friday, I had to take my nine-year-old to a tumbling competition up north. I don’t have a car or a driving license, so, unless we get a ride with someone, we usually get to these events by public transportation.

I don’t mind it. While there are certain inconveniences to not having a car, for the most part, it’s ultimately good for me. Because using public transportation (or even asking people for a ride) forces you to get out of your head, and you get to meet all sorts of people.

This particular event was in Yokne’am, a town in the middle of nowhere beautiful hilly landscape of Lower Galilee. It is about a 1.5-hour drive from where we live (far, by local standards) or nearly 3 hours by train and bus.

The north is like a different country: mostly rural and still green at this time of year, compared to the late-April burned yellow of the rest of Israel. People seem more relaxed somehow.

I hear Arabic as soon as we get off the train in Binyamina. A group of people chatting loudly: meeting and patting on the back someone who’s just arrived on the train. About 50% of Israeli Arabs live in the north.

We find our bus stop and wait for bus 157 to take us to Yokne’am. But bus 157 doesn’t come, so we decide to share a taxi with a girl who is going to one of the kibbutzim in that area.

Déjà vu

When the taxi arrives, I ask the driver how much it’s gonna cost to get to Yokne’am. He says, “I have no idea, I’m not from here. I’ll just turn on the meter.”

We get in. The girl, who needs to get off at the Eliakim interchange, sits at the front, and Maya and I — at the back.

A few minutes into the ride, the driver's phone rings and he starts speaking in Arabic.

Oh my god, I already wrote this exact sentence once before.

Only this time I understood everything. A woman’s voice asked him on the speaker, “Wen Ente?” (“Where are you?”). “Ba3id,” he replied (“Far”), and then they proceeded to have a normal conversation between two spouses.

I decided that this is my chance. I still haven’t had a conversation with a random person in Arabic. Sometimes you’re ready to have your first conversation with a stranger a week after starting to learn a language, and other times you need to wait a year.

To be sure, I have had a chance to practice speaking. I talked to Sam on iTalki and briefly did a language exchange with an Arab Israeli woman who lives not far from me.

But it’s one thing to speak to someone who knows you’re a learner and is there to help you learn, and it’s quite another thing to use the language ‘out in the wild’ so to speak.

I hesitate to speak to strangers because I’m generally afraid to waste people’s time (it’s a terrible quality to have if you’re trying to get better at speaking).

But of all places, taxis are the perfect place to do it. Shop owners might be on the run, or might not be too keen to talk to you in front of other people. But a taxi driver is just stuck there with you, so you might as well talk.

But what do I say?

There are generally two distinct stages of learning how to speak a new language:

Stage 1: You’ve just learned (most of) the grammar, have acquired basic vocabulary, and feel confident that you can say absolutely anything. But you still don’t understand almost anything that’s being said to you.

Stage 2: You have a much larger vocabulary and can understand quite a bit, but you have the confidence to say only the most basic things.

I sure hope there is a third one where these two sort of balance out.

I waited for the girl to get off at Eliakim (no need to have an eyewitness to my potential embarrassment), then I leaned forward and asked the driver, Min wen ente? “Where are you from?”

He said, “Haifa.” And then, in Hebrew, “How do you know Arabic?”

“Ana bat’3allam lahali.” (“I’m just learning by myself”) I replied in Arabic.

“Kol hakavod,” he replied in Hebrew. (“Good for you”)

We rode in silence for a few seconds.

“Qaddesh daqiq?” (“How many more minutes?”) I started again, realizing too late that I used the word for “how much” instead of “how many.”

“Daqaiq” he corrected my plural for ‘minutes,’ ignoring my other mistake. “Seba3 daqaiq. “ (“Seven minutes”).

The Arabic plural is hard. It’s the kind of hard that becomes easy: it is so unpredictable, you just stop trying to get it right.

To make a plural noun, you change one or more vowels in the singular form, but you never know what they change into.

Daqiq ‘minute’ becomes daqaiq ‘minutes’

Shaher ‘month’ becomes shuhur ‘months’ (or sometimes ashhur)

You get the idea.

According to my friend Sam, even native speakers don’t always get it right.

“Wen inti sakne?” The driver asked in Arabic (“Where do you live?”)

“Ba3id.” I replied (“Far”) “Modiin.”

He threw his head back, “Wow,” then in Hebrew, “My son was stationed there for a while.”

“Shu 3amal?” (“Doing what?”)

“Mishmar hagvul” (“Border control” in Hebrew). He passed me his phone, showing a photo of him beside a young man in the dark green uniform of border patrol units. Arab Israelis are automatically exempt from the army service, but some choose to volunteer.

“Where are you learning Arabic?” He asks, also in Hebrew.

“YouTube,” I reply. I tell him that I mostly watch two shows: Bala muwahade (“No offense”) and Ahki al Kamera (“I’m talking into the camera”). “Do you know them?” He nods.

Both these shows, on the Arabic language channel, are about the lived experiences of different groups of people, often people who are marginalized either within the Arab Israeli community (divorced women, trans people, girls who play soccer) or within the larger Israeli community.

Incidentally, just last week I watched an episode about Arab taxi drivers sharing their experiences with racial discrimination.

We ride in silence as I quietly wonder if it’s ok for me to still reply to Arabic even when he switches into Hebrew, and then he asks, in Arabic, “Khifti lamma haket Arabe?” “Were you scared when I spoke in Arabic?”

Wow.

I know what it’s like to feel threatened by the sound of a language, but I’ve never stopped to consider what it must be like to walk around knowing that people are threatened by the sound of you speaking your native language.

“La. La-innu… issa ana bafham.” I said, “No, because now I understand it… ”

But last year, I was.

Photo credit: Daniel Sherman

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